Ensuring Environmental Justice for All

Swamp Stomp

Volume 16, Issue 29

On June 7, 2016 the EPA took a step towards trying to ensure justice for the environment.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its first-ever Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis (EJ Technical Guidance).  This guidance represents a significant step towards ensuring the impacts of EPA regulations on vulnerable populations are understood and considered in the decision-making process (Lee and Maguire).

The purpose of the EJ Technical Guidance is to improve integration of environmental justice in the EPA’s core regulatory function.  Essentially, this better ensures that all Americans have access to some of their basic rights.  In particular the right to have access to clean water, clean air, and healthy communities.  The EJ Technical Guidance is enforced by the public and key stakeholders and they ensure that EPA rules are followed and that communities are not polluted beyond EPA regulations.

So how does it work? The EJ Technical Guidance equips EPA rule writers with key analytic principles and definitions, best practices, and technical questions to consider potential impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns. Each component helps us take complex issues and think about them in a consistent, step-by-step approach, while ensuring that sound science is the foundation of EPA’s decision-making process (Lee and Maguire).  This system gives the EPA a specific set of principles to consider when reviewing potential environmental justice concerns.

The finalization of the EJ Technical Guidance realizes the last commitment made under Plan EJ 2014, and sets the stage to deliver on key aspects of the draft EJ 2020 Action Agenda, EPA’s next environmental justice strategic plan for 2016-2020.  Through EJ 2020, the EPA will consider this guidance when addressing EPA rules that have EJ concerns.  This will be accomplished by implementing guidance, training, monitoring, evaluation and community involvement, including periodic assessments of how EPA is conducting EJ analyses (Lee and Maguire).  EJ 2020 is not just going to rely on the EJ Technical Guidance to get everything right, the EPA is going to strive to constantly learn more about EJ concerns and to improve upon the EJ Technical Guidance system.

If the EJ Technical Guidance system works the way it is designed to, it could be the first step towards ensuring environmental justice for all Americans.  It is too early in the EJ Technical Guidance’s life to determine whether the system works or not.  It is unknown how the public will react and if they will take their participation seriously.  Only time will tell just how effective and important the EJ Technical Guidance system is to ensuring justice for the environment.

Source:

Lee, Charles, and Kelly Maguire. “Incorporating Environmental Justice into All Regulatory Efforts.” The EPA Blog.  EPA, 7 June 2016. Web. 8 July 2016.

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